The thoughts, semi-thoughts, splenetic rantings and vague half ideas, of a leftie-lib marooned in Palmerston North, New Zealand.

Tuesday, 9 September 2014

Let's hear it for Hone

The election is about two minutes away, and I still haven't decided who I'll vote for. Last time, I voted Mana. This time, I'm struggling to see past the large shadow of Kim Dotcom. Yeah, you can put Hone Haraira and Laila Harre and Annette Sykes and John Minto on one side of the side of the scales - but Kim weighs heavily on the other side. So probably not.

The Greens I like. I particularly like their new tax plans. Labour, well. It's Labour. I could vote Labour. I was tending that way. Either Labour or the Greens. Probably Labour, mostly because Dirty Politics made me want to do the opposite of whatever Slater et al wanted me to do, and they didn't seem to want me to vote Labour.

Then Hone Harawira fires off one foul mouthed tirade and suddenly I'm all desperate to vote for him again. Because who couldn't agree with the rage at the way a really important issue like child poverty is being sidelined by a campaign to legalise weed:

Why am I seeing all this shit about weed and so... f***** little about feed [Feed the Kids]... just because the Internet Party is keen on weed … and got all the money to spend on all this flash advertising shit is no reason why… the same people who are also supposed to be working for Internet-Mana aren’t doing the same kind of package for Feed the Kids.

I am ambivalent about legalising marijuana. I can see that it is a colossal waste of police and court time. I can see that it is utterly wrong to render swathes of the population - including an awful lot of Maori - criminal. But at the same time, I see the effect that marijuana on young people every day in my job. I know that it won't be legal for 13 year olds - but increasing its availability won't make it less common, will it? I see numbed minds and personalities utterly blighted by this shit. I'm with Hone for those reasons alone.

But I'm also with him because, while I'm ambivalent about weed, I'm totally not ambivalent about child poverty, another scourge that our selfish narrow politics tries to squeeze to the sidelines. Harawira has always made it the central plank of his political platform, and for that, if nothing else, he's one of the most important voices in New Zealand politics.

Anything that moves this from the centre of the campaign is an irrelevant, frivolous distraction.